How to Coach

New Years is fast approaching and so is the desire for people to make resolutions.  As we all know, most resolutions will never see the light of day.  Those of us who have the fortitude to follow through with the changes begin to see positive changes soon enough.

Studies show that those of us who have a friend who work along with us to fulfil a resolution often do so with a greater chance of success.  Not only do we have an internal promise with ourselves to make the healthy change, we also have an external promise to another that drives us forward.  It is that external commitment that is the catalyst for change.  People generally find it very difficult to break a promise they've made to a friend.

If you are that friend who is helping a buddy to fulfil a resolution, perhaps the following tips can help make the job a little easier.

There are two spectrums I'll focus on.  The first is the Asking/Telling spectrum.  Your job in helping a friend is to get them to think about and commit to the change they want to make.  You can simply tell them what to do, because you've been down that particular road and know what curves and bends to expect. 

Telling  someone what to do can help to some extent, but it is not very effective.  The reason is that you are advising an action from your perspective and experience of the world.  The person you are advising has neither your perspective nor your particular experience of the world.  They may heed your advise and get positive results, but it will never be as effective if the person makes their own connections. 

Instead of telling someone it is always wiser for you to ask.  That is, ask people questions.  Let them find their own answers.  If they make the connections themselves, the lessons learned will be intergrated at a much deeper level, which will also increase the likelihood that change will take hold. 

You may have deep knowledge and experience in a certain area where a friend wishes to make changes.  You will most likely know a brilliant short-cut to get him/her to where they want to go.  You could simply tell them, but asking them will be more lasting.  Your knowledge and experience is the road map and allows you to design specific questions to focus your friend's attention in the right direction.  As they answer your questions they are following the correct road map, but they are drawing a road map from their own perspective.  It's a map that makes sense to your friend and which is unique to him/her.

The second spectrum is the problem/solution.  The focus on both the problem and solution have their own roles, but caution is still warrented. 

Focusing on the problem is important to understand how it is influencing a person in the here and now.  Both you and your friend need to clarify what it is that is preventing or hindering any movement forward.  Where the caution is needed is not tripping into the pitfall of digging too deep into why the problem is there in the first place.  What's done is done.  There is no going back.  We can not change the past and so there is no use in dragging up old pains.  It serves no purpose.

Once you and your friend understand where he/she stands in the present, then the focus should targeted on finding a solution.  When people start to talk about possibilities and actionables, this is a very motivating force.  It gives people the sense that they have control and oversight. 

An important factor to remember is to help the person paint a vivid and detailed picture in their minds of the solution.  If a person can see it, they can do it.  The opposite is also true - if a person can't picture something they can't do it.  It is that simple.  So when you are asking questions, whiche focus on the solution, try to get your friend to picture his/her way forward.

Focus, Feelings and Patterns of Questions

Focus Triggers Feelings

I want to begin this post with a simple question; in the last 30 minutes what have you, the reader, been focused on? Perhaps it was with a problem with work; great news you just received from a short call; or your kid asking you the same question for the hundredth time with a two-minute period. It could have been any number of things.

What we focus on directly determines what we feel. For example, an individual's manager gives some corrective feedback about taking more time to listen to people's side of an issue during the week's tactical meeting. John feels irritation with the feedback, which feeds into a sense of despise for his manager Kjetil also feels irritation, but it leads him to feel that his manager is trying to support him.

One thing is what we focus on, but what is also important to understand is the meaning we assign to that focus. We may wake up one Monday morning, look outside the bedroom window out onto a gray, cold, dark autumn morning. Some people's mood and motivation will be dampened and down, because of the what that particular mornings weather means to them. Some others will feel uplifted and looking forward to the day, because they reason with themselves that they will be inside the office most of the day engaged in an interesting project and the weather really has no significant relevance.

Learned Patterns

The meaning we assign to what we are focusing on at any particular moment is determined by our language, and more specifically by the questions we ask ourselves. We have a learned-pattern of questions that we ask ourselves time and time again. What do I mean?

Human being are pattern-based creatures. That is, almost everything we do, say, think, and feel in our day-to-day lives are based on learned patterns. We have an experience, we learn from that experience, and if repeated often enough it establishes a pattern (in some cases the event may only have to take place once to establish a learned pattern). For example, a person may as a child have gone up to a dog to pet it. The dog was scared and bit the child's hand. That person develops a pattern to avoid dogs. When her focus fall on a dog, she assigns a meaning that the dog is going to bite, and thus she avoids the dog. This is her pattern when it comes to dogs.

Questions as Learned-Patterns

We have a tendency to ask outselves a fixed pattern of questions depending on what we are focusing on. For simplicity's sake, focus can be categorized into three areas: what we can control; what we can influence; and what we can't control.

If our focus is on the areas of what we can control and influence, then the questions we ask oursevles tend to be constructive and opportunity-seeking in nature. For example, we may ask ourselves some of the following questions:

• What can I learn from this?
• How can I apply this to other areas of my life?
• What can I do with this experience/information?
• What won't I do next time? What will i do next time?
• What do I need more of? What do I need less of?
  
• This situation really blows, but where do I go from here?

These questions will tend to make us feel a number of resourceful feelings like a sense of control, oversight, certainty, growth, opportunity etc.

On the other hand, if our focus tends to be on those situations where have no-control, the questions we tend to ask ourselves tend to act as road blocks preventing from learning and moving forward. The questions tend to be negative of nature and endless-loops.

• Why did this happen to me?
• Why did events have to play out like this?
• Why does this always affect me?
• Why can't I find a solution?
• What is wrong with me?
• Why am I so useless and stupid?

Just writing these questions is depressing the hell out of me. Thankfully, I hardly ever do this anymore. For some people, this is their fixed pattern of questions. No wonder they tend to find themselves more often in an un-resourceful state than a resourceful one.

The questions we ask ourselves, depending on how we choose to focus on events, will have a direct influence on how we feel.

If you want to help someone, first find out what they are focusing on. Is it something they can control and/or influence or is it something where they have no-control? When they begin to describe the situation it is vital to pay attention, because they will tell you the questions they are asking themselves.

Important Note
The patterns people establish work on an unconscious level. Thus, the questions they routinely ask themselves are also being asked at an unconscious level. It is only by drawing their attention to this fact, that they can start to take control over their patterns. This awareness they then have the ability to change the questions they ask, the meaning they assign to an event and finally how they feel.